


You can lose points for lack of glitter.

by letosatie



Series: Les Amis Group Projects [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Puns, Established Relationship, Figure Skater Grantaire, Les Amis de l'ABC Shenanigans, M/M, Swearing, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 15:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7320601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letosatie/pseuds/letosatie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire takes his starting pose and, in the seconds between the sound system crackling and the opening notes of the music, he looks straight at the judges and yells, “Watch this shit, motherfuckers!”</p><p> </p><p>Based off <a href="http://exaire.tumblr.com/post/145992707699l">this</a> tweet.</p><p>Or the one where Grantaire is a Figure Skater and his skating career is a Les Amis Group Project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You can lose points for lack of glitter.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off [this](http://exaire.tumblr.com/post/145992707699l) tweet.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings: R is very flippant about his body. If this could trigger your body dysmorphia or gender dysphoria, please don't read. If this could lead you to think you can be flippant about another person's transition, please don't read.  
> There is lots of swearing.  
> There are people being mean to trans people.

Marius adjusts his beanie. “I’m sure R appreciates our support but I’m not sure quite so many sequins were necessary,” he suggests. 

“I can assure you, Marius, there is artistic merit in each of these sequins,” says Feuilly, indicating the huge banner he made, which reads ‘R is grand’ and features a unicorn for some reason.

“I mainly meant the sequins on Courfeyrac actually,” Marius responds. 

“He looks adorable,” Jehan sighs. “You’re just worried about picking up sequins in your apartment for the next week.”

“They get everywhere,” grumbles Marius.

“Tell me about it,” complains Combeferre, “I find them on freshly changed bed sheets. It defies science.”

“It’s a small price to pay to have me in your bed, Ferre,” Courfeyrac assures him. 

“That’s probably true, Ferre,” Bahorel adds.

“It’s just a few shiny, shiny discs and you get all this,” Jehan gestures like a game show host to Courfeyrac, who shimmies and the sequins flash dizzyingly.

“Can we concentrate, so we can see what R’s up against?” Enjolras is frowning at everyone.

“I think R’s biggest competition is his resignation,” Éponine says, as they take their seats on the bleachers.

“That’s true,” Musichetta agrees, offering a thermos of hot chocolate around.

“No. It’s not. Anyone would get down after everything the FFSG have put him through,” Enjolras whips around to hiss, his infamous glare in danger of piercing even Éponine’s air of nonchalance. “Not to mention the ISU.”

“Arrgh, you’ve unleashed the eyes-of-fury,” cries Courfeyrac, leaping in front of Éponine in slow-mo, “Don’t worry, I’ll take the impact.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes and everyone laughs, but the mood is considerably more sober after the mention of the Fédération Française des Sports de Glace. They’ve, most of them, been shoulder-to-shoulder with Grantaire during his battle to be accepted as a competitor in the Men’s Figure Skating competitions. 

Jehan met Grantaire when R was fifteen and France’s best Olympic hope in Women’s Figure Skating. The public was horrified when he disappeared and beside themselves when he turned up again, after one season’s break, correcting pronouns and signing up to compete in the Men’s. It was Jehan who introduced Grantaire to the language of not being cis and it was Jehan who helped him find the Les Amis. Grantaire’s skating career has been a Les Amis group project ever since. 

Cosette and Éponine have known Grantaire since they used to compete against each other, and the girls have the sort of friendship that frequently collapses under their combined competitive natures, and they scuffle over skating & over crossword puzzles & over cute skirts & over Marius, but it’s also the sort of friendship that neither of them will give up on. 

Cosette has ancient photos of her and R and Ep dressed as snowflakes for the Christmas recital. She’s got some of them on the podium; Ep has braces, Cosette has legs so scrawny it’s a wonder she can lift her skates, and R has wild hair and a gold medal but is too busy giving Ep bunny ears to smile at the camera.

Éponine has more recent photos of R back on the ice for the first time after six weeks away to recover from his top surgery, hair still wild, face lit up and open, as his skates fly over the ice. She’s got one of him giving her the finger after he landed his first quad. She’s got one of him snogging Enjolras when the negotiations with the FFSG finally worked out.

Grantaire skates to the middle of the ice. He’s 20 now, and it’s the third frustrating season in-a-row of blatant bias against him. Grantaire grew tall, and worked hard to get muscles, but he has the same crooked smile and the same thousand-yard stare as the child that thrilled this same crowd years ago. He has the same talent too. And the same pertinacity.

Jehan has all his fingers braided over each other for excessive luck. Courfeyrac is shouting and waving the unicorn banner. Bossuet, Joly and Musichetta are attempting a Mexican wave. Bahorel, Marius, Feuilly and Combeferre pull their sweaters up. They have U, R, A and g painted on their bellies respectively. 

“Yes love, I get that it’s a science pun,” says Musichetta dryly, as Joly collapses on her hiccoughing and snorting with giggles.

Enjolras is muttering, “quad toe loop, butterfly jump, triple axel/ salchow, split jump, attitude spin, tuck axel, quad lutz, death drop, triple lutz/ axel/ camel/ sit spin, crossfoot….” under his breath. 

Grantaire takes his starting pose and, in the seconds between the sound system crackling and the opening notes of the music, he looks straight at the judges and yells, “Watch this shit, motherfuckers!”

He launches into a high speed, dynamic routine, pulling off a quad in the first 16 bars. He’s grinning and his bulky, hairy form is graceful in a way that is simply incongruous.

“It’s art,” says Feuilly.

“It’s magic,” Bossuet says.

“God, that split jump, I’m jealous.” 

“I want to have sex with him,” says Courfeyrac, “He wouldn’t even have to take his skates off.”

“I want to have his babies,” admits Combeferre.

“I want to eat his brain.” 

“Jehan, if I could tear my eyes away from R right now, I would be gaping at you in horror. You are a kinky, bizarre munchkin. Don’t ever change,” mutters Bahorel.

Enjolras has torn a hole in his scarf in his agitation; he’s mumbling, “C’mon mon ours, c’mon R …”

“Is he doing okay?” asks Joly.

Cosette and Éponine exchange glances. 

“His salchow was a bit of a wrap,” says Éponine.

“His legs were crossed too high,” explains Cosette. “I think his connecting half loop was weak.”

“His edges are impeccable…. Oh!”

“That’s his second quad.”

Enjolras’ mumbling has increased to a chant, “C’mon mon ours, c’mon R…”

Les Amis start calling, “R, R, R…” in time to the music.

When Grantaire comes out of his final combination, he’s not smiling but his cheeks are relaxed, his forehead is smooth. He’s peaceful. He pushes into his crossfoot spin. Some of the crowd are already starting to stand up. At Grantaire’s ending pose and the last note, they roar.

Grantaire salutes the judges, and it’s mocking, then waves around the rink. He pulls down his top to flash a surgically-altered nipple at the Amis. He’s very proud of it, thank you very much; he stared majestically off into the sunset on camera to sell a lot of multivitamins, and pulled off flashy axels to ‘demonstrate the pinpoint accuracy’ of generic-brand sport bandages, and accepted many other soul-crushing income bumps, all to buy his made-to-order chest.

Les Amis are yelling and jumping, Jehan is hugging Musichetta and Bossuet is crowing, Courfeyrac is whooping and Bahorel is crying. 

Grantaire pitches Enjolras a kiss.

Enjolras is way too cool to jump up and down, but he’s standing and glowing and he rolls his eyes at R’s antics fondly. As Grantaire steps off the ice, Enjolras scrambles down out of the stands to circle the rink to where the competitors wait for the score.

Grantaire’s coach Myriel, who came out of retirement when no one else would give 17 year old Grantaire a chance to transition his skating alongside his gender presentation, is holding out a jacket for R to slide into. Enjolras shifts his weight between his feet while R shrugs the outerwear on. And then they hug. It’s tight and Grantaire is shaking slightly.

Enjolras’ nose is squashed on R’s collarbone. He whispers, “I’m so proud of you,” into it.

Grantaire pulls back. “Don’t worry, dou dou,” he says patting Enjolras’ curls roughly, “if you stay in school and just say no to drugs, you too can grow up to resemble a bear skin rug on skates.”

“Can I also learn how to piss off a panel of people before I’ve even started my routine?” asks Enjolras.

“Why do you provoke them, R?” his coach moans. 

But Grantaire just snuggles closer to Enjolras and shrugs, “They don’t need excuses to mark me down so I might as well call attention to them.”

Myriel smiles. “You were almost flawless.”

The marks go up. The judges haven’t dared to mark down too much for his technical performance but they take points for presentation where the interpretation can be fuzzy, leaving Grantaire second with four more competitors left to skate. The Amis are booing from the stands. Grantaire can hear Bahorel swearing, and he smiles at Enjolras who is red with indignation. 

As they move away from the competitor waiting area, a journalist takes the photo opportunity and asks how Grantaire feels. “Well, that’s the sport isn’t it?” Grantaire says, shrugging. “You can have all the moves but you can still lose points for lack of glitter.” 

“I’ll bring you a tube of glitter next time, R,” says the reporter.

Grantaire laughs, “Thanks mon ami.”

“I’m going to go see if I can get their reasoning out of them,” says Myriel.

“Why bother?” fumes Enjolras, “They interpret the rules to hurt R whatever he does.” Enjolras’ jaw is tight and his eyes are as hard to look at as the sun. He’s beautiful, delicate, often mistaken for the transitioning boyfriend next to Grantaire’s stubble and deliberately developed muscles. But Dieu he is frightening. R’s been ensconced under the cloak of his determination for years. 

Grantaire sighs. “Who cares. Let’s go get some frites.”

They retreat into the changing room. Montparnasse is there. He looks Enjolras up and down with a lustful smirk. It frightens Grantaire because Montparnasse looks like someone took Grantaire and photoshopped him, adding good posture and stilling the nervous ticks, waxing him smooth and sprinkling him with fairy dust. And of course, Montparnasse doesn’t have to manually apply certain body parts. Grantaire already wonders how long Enjolras will continue to be amused by him. It does not help to see other men openly throwing out lures.

“Enjollllraaaass,” Montparnasse drawls, “Why does M. Grantaire need to compete when he already has the best prize.” He digs his tan fingers into Enjolras’ curls and tuts, “All the gold one could ever need.”

Enjolras is usually the centre of the room, without anybody noticing or attempting to make it so; he draws attention and perpetuates action. But he does this thing, sometimes, where he attempts to yield the floor. During the meetings regarding Grantaire’s participation, for example, Enjolras will stand very deliberately two steps behind R. It doesn’t work. The attention invariably slides back to Enjolras, and Grantaire is left standing out front feeling as inconsequent and inutile as the breasts that used to adorn him.

And even though Grantaire has seen Enjolras wilt a person with a disdainful glare, right now he has edged close to Grantaire and fisted his hands in Grantaire’s jacket, looking up to breathe, “Mon gros ours.”

It makes Grantaire laugh and kiss him on the nose, drawn in despite the ridiculous playacting. “Oui mon petit sucre d’orge?”

Enjolras pouts, and it’s such an incongruous look Grantaire starts to reach for his phone to snap a pic and record this moment for history, and Courfeyrac. Only Enjolras slithers his arms up around Grantaire’s shoulders and whispers, “If I’m your little lolly, why do you not take me into your mouth?”

And then they are making out against a wall, Grantaire groaning and swearing, Enjolras squeaking and muttering streams of encouragement.

“Courf wants to fuck you,” he gasps, “Ferre wants you to fuck him.” Grantaire is too smart to forget this is staged, but damn if he’s not going to take the opportunity to squeeze Enjolras’ arse through his jeans. Enjolras has his hands dug into Grantaire’s scruffy hair and he’s saying, “I’ll fight ‘em, I’ll fight ‘em all. For you.”

“You’re not fooling anyone,” Montparnasse calls, giving up and leaving. “I know no one really wants Grantaire the wannabe.”

“There are no strings on Montparnasse,” says Grantaire. He steps away from Enjolras.

Enjolras turns his eyes-of-fury on Grantaire. “You are a real boy,” he growls. 

Grantaire is cackling now. “That should be my next routine, I can wear red lederhosen and graduate from choppy, stilted movements to fluid ones by the end.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “Sometimes you’re more like the bit where the kids all turn into donkeys.”

Grantaire imitates a rim shot. “So I’m an ass? Does that mean you’ll pin my tail later?” 

Enjolras hums happily and tugs R back towards him. “Do I have to be blindfolded? What if it takes me a couple of tries to stick it in the right place?”

“You’ll be the death of me,” Grantaire says. But they make out lazily for a while anyway.

“You are so great, R,” Enjolras says. It makes Grantaire feel tired; being good usually means more to aim for, more hard work, more chances to fail.

He shrugs, “I’m going to get changed.” Grantaire starts to pull at his costume and Enjolras grabs his hands. 

“Don’t,” he says, “you don’t know.” 

“I know, Enjolras. They do not want me in their competition, they do not want me to represent them. They will make sure I don’t get onto the podium.” He sits on one of the benches. “Montparnasse’s jumps are often half a foot lower than mine, but he looks pretty and, even though he doesn’t skate with his dick, it matters to the judges that he has one. And I don’t.”

Enjolras doesn’t respond and Grantaire can’t stop shovelling dirt into the hole now. “You know what it is?” he asks, not expecting an answer, “it’s that they can’t get over that I was supposed to win them a medal two years ago. It’s just another group of people I’ve let down.”

“Mon Dieu, you can’t help that you’re a man.”

“Know what maman said, just before she kicked me out?” Grantaire at his scrubs his chin and Enjolras can’t stand the creases between his eyebrows, which only show up when he’s trying so hard to not be hurt.

“What did she say?” he asks.

“She couldn’t understand why 'I wouldn’t just keep being a girl until we’d been to the Olympics.' She said it was 'so selfish to take this opportunity away from her, from France,' when ‘I was such a good girl and wasn’t like I could ever be a proper boy.’”

And Enjolras wants to smash things. People’s narrow-minded thoughts, or the wonky foundation of the education system, or the bricks and mortar of the Palais du Luxembourg and the Palais Bourbon. He wants to rage until every citizen knows better than to harm Grantaire.

He takes a shuddering breath.

“Do you regret your decision? Would you have preferred to be closeted and have had your shot at the Olympics?”

Grantaire beams then. “What was it Montparnasse said? All the gold one could ever need.” He pulls Enjolras down onto his lap.

“Besides,” says Enjolras, “someday trans inclusion won’t be blinked about, let alone contested. It might be in time for you. And if not, you’re already making a difference just by being yourself.”

“Sans doute,” says Grantaire, hiding his sarcasm and his dopey smile in Enjolras’ neck.

Enjolras says R is brave but Grantaire thinks he’d have given up over and over without him, without the Amis. It’s hard not to be at least a little warmed by the fire of Enjolras’ stand for equality; something he fights for with a belief that’s as consistent as sunrise and with a brashness that’s as cheering as a red flag. 

Grantaire sighs. “Okay, let’s cuddle a bit more and then go hear some scores.”

As it lands, Grantaire is not placed on the podium but has enough points to go onto the Championnat de France Elite.

“Alors, let’s go get those frites,” says Enjolras. He looks smug. They may not have outright victory but they’ve gained ground.

Grantaire suffers under a group hug when they meet up with les Amis at the cafe. Enjolras goes to order while R pretends not to be weighed down by his friends disappointment. He is aware their disappointment is not directed at his performance but he still feels as if he is the agent of it.

He relaxes soon enough with fries and coffee in his belly and Enjolras’ hand wrapped over his knee. Cosette and Éponine are adjusting their breasts aggressively in Marius’ direction. Marius is edging behind Feuilly with a face like a tomato. Courfeyrac and Bahorel are being so loud the couple at the next table move. 

Grantaire feels a tug on his arm. There is a little tow-headed girl standing by his elbow. She looks about ten and her eyes are huge and fixed on Grantaire.

“Hi,” says Grantaire.

“Hi,” she says, “You’re R.”

“I am,” he agrees. “Do you skate?”

She screws her nose up. “No. I’m not into skating.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says, with a slight question in his tone.

“I play football,” the girl says. “Me and maman read all about you though.” She peeks around R to the rest of the table. “And you. You’re Combeferre. And you. You’re Enjolras. Maman uses a lot of your arguments when dumb parents complain that I play against their daughters because I’ve got a girl brain in a boy body.”

“Some people are dumb, huh?” says Grantaire.

“So dumb,” she says, tossing her ponytail.

“What’s your name?” Grantaire asks her.

“Ambre. Me and maman chose it together. I used to be Louis,” she snorts, “like everyone.”

“It’s nice.”

“Maman says you made it easier for us. You know, because you had to fight to compete before we did,” Ambre says. “I think it’s really cool that you still skate. I want you to have this.”

She starts picking at the knot on one the friendship bracelets on her wrist.

“Cool,” says Grantaire, “can I draw something for you?”

“Bien sûr,” Ambre says, as Cosette offers to help her undo the bracelet.

Jehan rips a leaf out of his notebook and Combeferre hands over a pen. R bends over the paper and draws Ambre kicking a soccer ball and it rebounding off Grantaire’s head. Ambre giggles at the drawing and carefully ties the bracelet on R’s wrist.

Enjolras scribbles a phone number on the back of R’s drawing. “Give that number to your maman in case you need help with the FFF, okay Ambre?”

“Yeah, I will,” she promises, taking the paper. She whispers to Grantaire. “He’s really pretty. Do you kiss him?”

“Whenever I can,” says Grantaire.

“Lucky.” She rolls her eyes. “I gotta go; à plus R.”

“Bye Ambre,” R choruses with the whole table. 

“Shhht,” Grantaire warns, holding up an accusing finger.

Enjolras’ eyes are wide and pleading, his lips clamped between his teeth. 

“You’re going to break him,” Courfeyrac laughs. “Let him lord it over you. You know he lives for being right.”

“No,” says R.

Enjolras whimpers. He looks like he’s going to burst. He also looks very cute and is probably going to have sex with Grantaire later.

“Alright, let me have it,” Grantaire relents.

Enjolras gusts out a breath. “I told you so. I told you.”

Grantaire’s friends laugh. He laughs with them. His skating career is more than an Olympic dream, more than a group project, more than Grantaire’s agitating nature. It’s a battle, and it’s Enjolras’ tomorrow, and Ambre’s. 

Grantaire is looking forward to it.

“So about my lederhosen idea…” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone knows helpful things about Figure Skating, France or being trans in sport, and wants to suggest adjustments, hit me up.
> 
>  
> 
> My exr tumblr blog is [exaire](http://exaire.tumblr.com/)
> 
> My main tumblr blog is [letosatie](http://letosatie.tumblr.com/)... but that is mainly pictures of butts and small, brown-haired actors from the UK


End file.
